Coffee Mug Cross Stitch Pattern

About this coffee cross stitch pattern

The mug has a sleepy kawaii face with rosy cheeks, and pale steam curls up from the coffee. It sits on a teal saucer with a few coffee beans and two sugar cubes scattered around it. It’s tiny, but there’s enough room for every small detail to read clearly once it’s stitched.

It’s a natural gift for a coffee lover’s desk, a kitchen nook or a coffee bar shelf. Pair it with the Grumpy Koala with Coffee for a coffee-themed pair, or browse our food collection. Our guide to printing a cross stitch pattern uses it as an example of a small chart. It is also in our tiny cross stitch patterns.

What you need

• Fabric: 14-count Aida in white, cut to at least 10“ x 11“ (3“ around the design for hooping and framing).
• Thread: 22 DMC colors, about 22 skeins in total, stitched with two strands. The main colors are 434 Brown – Light (406 stitches), 310 Black (327) and 436 Tan (154).
• Needle: a size 24 tapestry needle.
• Stitches: full cross stitches only, with no backstitch.

Difficulty and stitching time

It’s rated Intermediate for its colors, not its size. At 1,479 stitches it’s short, roughly 15 to 25 hours at a steady 60 to 100 stitches an hour, but 22 colors in a design this small means constant thread changes. The mug and its outline (434 and 310) take up 733 of the stitches; the other colors are small amounts for the steam, beans and saucer.

Tips for stitching this pattern

• Stitch the mug and saucer before the steam. The steam sits on bare fabric with no edges to guide you, so it’s much easier to place once the solid shapes around it are finished.
• Bag the two bean browns separately. The coffee beans use 300 Mahogany – Very Dark and 898 Coffee Brown – Very Dark, which look alike on a floss card.
• Leave the face for last. The rosy cheeks and eyes are a few stitches each; placing them on the finished mug keeps the smile centered.

Size, fabric and framing

On 14-count Aida the finished design measures 3.7“ x 4.2“ (9.4 x 10.7 cm). On 16-count it comes out at 3.2“ x 3.7“, and on 18-count at 2.9“ x 3.3“. For the 14-count version, an 8“ x 10“ frame leaves room for a wide mat.

It’s small enough for a 5-inch hoop, a greeting card or a fridge magnet.

What’s in the free PDF

• A cover page and a one-page overview with a preview of the design
• The chart, split across as many printable pages as you choose, in color or black and white, with a symbol for every DMC color, center lines, a mini-map showing which part of the design each page covers and a color key on every page
• The thread list: DMC number, color name, number of stitches and skeins to buy for each color
• The finished size on 11-, 14-, 16-, 18- and 28-count Aida